Open Source Weapon Makes You Puke

[Limor] of Adafruit Industries and the Ice Tube Clock has made her own open source non-lethal weapon: The Bedazzler. After attending a conference by the DHS where she saw the big-budget Dazzler, she decided to make her own. Thirty-six LEDs, six switching FETs, a Boarduino, and a former flashlight later, the Bedazzler makes a better rave toy than a weapon. It doesn’t work as-is, but we figure it will only be a matter of time before someone hacks this to make people… umm hack. See the video after the break.

The bylaw officer that stops by in here (911 center) has an led flashlight with a fast-strobe function (probably around 10 hz) like this and it does make you instantly incapable of preventing the vertigo. You wouldn’t make a very good sharpshooter or hand-to-hand combatant. It wouldn’t stop someone with an uzi from making you into swiss cheese.

36 LEDs aren’t going to hurt your vision, or make you puke. I’ve been a rave/club DJ for >10 years and I can say firsthand that’s not the effect it achieves. Let’s see them try to shut down a party with these – nobody would even notice.

There’s a commercial light out that does something similar to this called the VUE (models 1.1->6.1) which just use a single huge fresnel lens instead of small focusing lenses. It’s a party light, not a weapon. (If you take off the 12″x12″ fresnel on the big ones you can burn people with a mag-lite though)

Also, the one linked to here doesn’t work. The puking in the video was a joke, in case the OP didn’t catch that. Firsthand example of the difference between a million in research and a home tinkerer with patent info.

In the scientific community, failures are just as important as the successes (although, the taxpayers tend to hate the failures that result in “wasted” money). The fact that they are trying to open-source technology that the government and other firms are putting together is a great service to humanity. Seriously, who wants their tax dollars going to a million dollar non-lethal flashlight when it can be made via home hacking. Kudos to them for giving it a shot, and I hope they keep open sourcing more projects and get some right!

I still like the microwave pain gun (Raytheon) as a non-lethal weapon (although I’m sure this has ramifications with pace-makers and similar medical devices, which is why it might never be accepted as a proper crowd control device).

Hey now, that’s an interesting idea. Take a genuine Ronco Bedazzler(tm) and see if there’s a COTS or inexpensively prototyped – clear epoxy is cheap and fast – LED that would be feed properly through the gun. I think the real thing folds metal to affix it to clothing so maybe the two LED leads could be tabs to achieve the same thing.

You’d have to wire it behind the clothing but as far as clothing LEDs, it might be better than those large lillypad style LED patches.

@jproach…white leds are a blue/uv emitter with a yellow phosphor coating, so they look white. I have no idea about uv leakage though.

Also I got a flashlight for twenty bucks from dealextreme, runs on a lithium 14500 cell and it’s programmable for variable brightness and pwm. I can set it to strobe its 200 lumen led at 15hz, more than enough to disorient someone if you pull it out in the dark. Just sayin.

I love how they have made an uber-strobe, HOWEVER, I love the fact that some old crusty tw*t managed to rip folks off for a cool million to make a strobe light.

Thats the lesson to be learnt here folks, it might be pointless shit sometimes, but some dumb fucker will get all dreamy eyed over it and part with their cash for your arduino hot glued to a playstation controller and a couple of servors tacked on for good measure.

Hey!!! I just found the Brown Noise Frequency. SSSSHHHHH!!!!! Don’t tell anyone. Maybe I can get a $1,000,000 government contract to ‘wink’ ‘wink’ find a sound frequency that disables people by making them sh!t their pants.